​As we live, the geography we live in and the whole World practically teaches us not to be surprised as usual and we got used to it, anyway we have very few surprising and unexpected things in our lives. Everyday, hundreds of news, hundreds of images and visions bombard our visual memory. With every photograph, picture and performance we see, we start to feel less surprised and affected. This situation enslaves us day by day, however in this period of becoming banal, our eyes scan all the visuals they can find in a hysterical search to feed their instinctual anticipation with their insatiable curiosity, but usually what it sees is far from satisfying this visual curiosity and joy. And can not be satisfied until we see a piece of art which has the power to excite us.

It is likely that you find an answer to these expectations in Cihanoğlu’s latest creations. The backbone of the pattern is established over the masterful, intense painting textured, light colored, like a theater scene and takes the viewer to a subconscious journey and addressing the most secluded feelings of a human being with his own style, and immediately perceived novelty. These performances really are plastic works of art to which we can feel intense visual delights, and have the power to excite us again.

Anyway, in all those years I know him, I couldn’t find a proper definition objectively for the positive perception, which I perceive from his works. Where does the extraordinariness and authenticity of his work come originally from? Is it the touching themes he uses ? Or the special color relations he uses ? His subconscious constructions ? Or his diverging, authentic personality, which is also pervaded in his paintings? I think the most rationalistic explanation to these, lays in Barış’s picture itself which includes all of those qualities in itself. In fact, the main reason that I can’t classify him and his art points to the fact that, he is an artist out of “categories” in Turkish contemporary art.

The “reality” in Barış’s performances is something beyond the reality of the figures on the canvas, it is a reality that forms in your emotions. Like when you have a beautiful and delicious meal and can’t solve the chemistry of that taste in your mouth; or when you are touched with the effects of a pleasant film right after watching it, about his works, the feeling we have is something similar. The objective part of the human mind is blocked in such conditions. Feels himself all alone but causelessly happy in an imaginary dilemma, but this is a moment of perception, and all the teachings procured, feel desperate. In such times, works of art affect people just like the “Pheromones” , the love molecules. Like the molecular smells which we can’t understand using our five senses, but unconsciously affected by. Because the pheromones too, pass over the logic and affect the sensational center of the human brain, and in fact, even when many of us when thinking that we’re acting logically, we’re possessed by our pheromones, losing control to them.

‘Pheromone ‘’, yes. This word’s tale starts in 50’s which is very unfamiliar to most of us. After this time, scientists called this invisible chemical communicator pheromone. Scientists experimenting in 50’s derived the word ( Pheromone ) out of words of Greek origin. And so people got to know the pheromones. The scientists say “these are the molecules emitted by a creature to attract another of the same kind”. And lately, above five senses, pheromones are accepted as the sixth one. In other words, pheromones have a strong effect altering our behaviors and perceptions. Barış’s choice of choosing pheromones as concept in his last exhibition lures us a little more to that mysterious topic. This unseen, but strongly felt effect is fairly visualized in his paintings and presented to the audience in a plastic manner, and the most important and sharply seen common point about the paintings is, that they include our present instincts in them. In his big sized painting named “Dürtü” ( Urge ), we see a woman “peeking” on another through the door and she also makes us a part of the voyeurism. And in another painting named “saklanan güzellik” ( hidden beauty ), we witness a small girl tried to be protected from the figures standing for social taboos and motives symbolizing manhood, by naked women surrounding themselves around her with maternal instincts, who are more “experienced” with former practices. And we generally see the big spaces reserved for women, to be constricted by intervention of men, and feel the perspective which dignifies women and their special naïve constitution almost in every performance, in different installations.

And I don’t think it’ll be false to talk of a virtuosity in Barış’s performances too, despite his relatively young age, he has a classical virtuosity acquired after training for many years either texturally or pictural, or fictional. Today very less of young painters paint “modern figure paintings” with classical methods, receiving no “technical” assistance, just using hand artifice and Peinture with such quality and authenticity? I think it’s his cunning that I talk about which enables him to show such special construction managed quickly and skillfully.

There’s a well known anecdote about Albert Einstein, that he was an Atheist since he listened to the live performance of the famous Violin virtuoso Yehuda Mehunin, but after listening to his performance, turning to those beside him and telling “Doubtlessly, there is a God, I believe this after then” is told between people. Surrender of such a great scientist to the universe of arts from the universe of positive sciences, is very intriguing isn’t it? That’s called the power of art…

I see this power in Barış Cihanoğlu's paintings. There’s something in his paintings which lures you into the painting, and makes you look deep inside. Bülent Aytaç